Election Section

NEW YORK — Newsday is eliminating a third section on weekdays and offering more early retirement packages as part of an ongoing effort to cut costs.

Stu Vincent, a spokesman for the Long Island-based newspaper, said Tuesday the cutbacks were part of a cost-cutting program occurring throughout parent company Tribune Co., which also publishes the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune.

The third section covered a different theme every day, including business, health, technology, entertainment and real estate.

Newsday is moving many of the articles that had appeared in those pages into the main section, Vincent said. He said the biggest cutbacks would come in the technology and entertainment articles.

The change will save the newspaper from making an extra delivery to newsstands since the first and second sections will now be delivered together. Previously the second and third sections had been delivered before the main news section, Vincent said. The second section contains feature articles and coverage of movies and television.

Vincent also said the paper, which has 3,000 full- and part-time employees, expects about 50 staffers to accept the latest offer of retirement packages. That would be about the same number who accepted early retirement last summer.

Vincent declined to say how much money the paper expected to save or exactly when the production changes and early retirement offers would be made.